A couple of times (and maybe more) I wrote about the nutrition of workers and peasants before the revolution. Honestly, I have never been able to find anything good about their diet, but bad - as much as necessary.
But there were individuals (many such personalities) who came with statements:
- You are all lying, adherent of world communism! Before the revolution in Russia, rivers of milk flowed with jelly banks, the workers ate exceptionally high-quality food and a lot - the calorie intake of what is worth!
Some even brought this very "calorie". Three thousand five hundred and eighty calories came out!
True, they did not give a link to the document, this fixing, but I'm meticulous, I myself found it (not a document, but publications in which this figure is mentioned)
So, how much and what did the Russian worker eat before the revolution?
• Black bread - one and a half pounds a day, that's 1270 calories
• Half a pound of white bread per day - 485 calories
• Potatoes - one and a half pounds a day - 580 calories
• Cereal quarter pound - 350 calories
• Beef half a pound - 300 calories
• Lard - 0.125 lbs - 390 calories
• Sugar - 0.125 lbs - 205 calories
As a result, we have the same 3580 calories, half of which is sweated exclusively from bread.
Meat, if translated into our usual grams, 200 grams, animal fats in the form of lard - about 50 grams, sugar - too. And bread - eight hundred grams.
Russian pound, if anything, 409.5 grams.
Let's not forget, by the way, that meat and bacon were allowed only on short days. On lean days, there is no meat on the diet, lard was replaced with linseed oil most often.
But this product layout is also very average. According to the testimony of factory inspectors and paramedics, in many factories, workers did not see meat for weeks, as well as dairy products and eggs. I strongly advise you to read the chic study "Living Standards of the Workers of Russia (Late 19th - Early 20th Centuries)" by Yuri Kiryanov.
The most interesting thing is that in modern times such a diet will be called creepy, leading to diseases that humiliate human dignity. At the same time, most likely, the same people who tell how wonderful it was for the workers in the good old days.
I, in general, did not touch on this topic for the Hallivars.
I have said it many times and will repeat it again: food is an excellent marker for tracking the development of society. And yes, at the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the twentieth century, such a diet seemed luxurious to most citizens of the Russian Empire - there is plenty of bread!